How It All Began
Many years ago I came across a word that has not let go of me since: oblivion of the person — a concept coined by the philosopher Robert Spaemann. It describes something that happens quietly and almost unnoticed. We forget who the human being is. Not deliberately, not maliciously — it simply happens. Bit by bit. We talk about the human being in the language of biology, of economics, of psychology, and in doing so we overlook what is essential: that every human being is a someone, not a something. That he does not consist merely of cells, does not merely fulfill a function in the economic cycle, is not merely a bundle of stimuli and responses.
This observation touched me deeply as a young student. For at the same time, anyone who truly encounters another human being senses that there is something there that cannot be dissolved into functions and capacities. Something not at our disposal. Something that gives the human being a dignity that no one can bestow and no one can take away. You sense it when you look into a child’s eyes. You sense it at a deathbed. You sense it in love. There is someone there — and this being-someone is not something that can be explained or explained away.
Between these two poles — the forgetting of the person and the person’s inalienable dignity — is where this book moves.
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